Athens News Agency: News in English, 09-09-18

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article

From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] PM Karamanlis addresses rally in Megara

[02] Papandreou addresses rally in Ioannina

[01] PM Karamanlis addresses rally in Megara

Focusing on the main opposition PASOK party, Karamanlis said that it "is distorting things and creating false images".

"They are applying themselves to vagueness, they are sharing out bounced promises, they are proposing dangerous recipes," the prime minister said and added that when PASOK's leader "limits himself to general references, the citizens must not wonder about what he is saying but about what he is concealing."

Karamanlis stressed that the "dilemma for all is if one shall proceed with confidence and a clear plan or leave the country to the dangers of irresponsibility and the absence of any plan."

The prime minister reminded that in 1981 the debt was below 2 billion euros and the PASOK governments delivered it one hundred times higher in 2004. He stressed that unemployment is currently at lower levels than those in 2004 and that "PASOK cannot pass by it, of course it is not in its interest, but it is the truth."

He also pointed out that no one can forget that until the crisis broke out there had been improvement in all the economic indexes, a stable decrease in unemployment and tangible results in the economy and in society.

He mentioned that all that time PASOK was reacting with "a no to everything and was acting as if it did not see any crisis, claiming that everything was a pretext and an alibi of the government."

Karamanlis also said that all the necessary measures must be taken now and not tomorrow and the country must not be allowed to become trapped in adventures.

"If we believe that difficult situations are handled with pleasant recipes, the consequences will be hard for all to bear," he noted.

Karamanlis referred in detail to all the public projects that the government has promoted and planned in western Attica. He also noted that arrangements concerning university asylum will change so that this institution will not be identified with illegality, arbitrariness and crime, addingthat a few dozen people cannot block streets every day and promised that this state of affairs will not continue.

Lastly, Karamanlis stressed that the government respects the rights of immigrants who are employed legally in the country and is seeking their social incorporation.

"No, however, to the uncontrolled waves of illegal immigration, no to the modern day slave drivers," he concluded.

[02] Papandreou addresses rally in Ioannina

Papandreou also appealed to voters of the ruling New Democracy (ND) party who "were disappointed by the government over the past six years."

The PASOK leader referred twice during his address to President Karolos Papoulias, who is from this region, saying that he remembered the era when, being a student in the '70s, he used to visit the encumbent President of the Republic in Ioannina.

"We do not have a passion for power and for the chairs, but a passion for Greece which is awakening to change the course of the country," he further said.

Papandreou accused the government as being the one to blame for the "inexistant state" today, a state that "is consciously indifferent about the economic and social cost of its choices and the only cost that preoccupied it was the political one."

He went on to say that the path which the country has before it, and which he is proposing, is not easy but it is strewn with social justice, hope and optimism, while stressing that two diammetrically different policies are clashing in these elections.

Lastly, Papandreou referred to the measures that his government will take, if it wins the elections, during the first 100 days, measures which, as he said, "will tackle the problems of the big debt which it shall inherit from the New Democracy party, of recession, market immobility and low growth rates."

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article